Time-of-Day functionality is needed to support some LTE applications, which is an important area for future telecommunications technologies. Current timing over packet techniques include: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers standard 1588 (IEEE1588); Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Network Timing Protocol (NTP) (rfc4330); or International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standard J.211. These techniques typically use timestamps or other mechanisms built into each standard. These techniques typically assume symmetrical transfer delay from master to slave and from slave to master, however in many circumstances, such as for example, when the forward path is diverse from the reverse path, this assumption is not valid.
Therefore, a means of providing improved timing over packet that does not depend on symmetrical transfer delay is highly desirable.